


The World Is More Interesting With You Alive

by auroreanrave



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Hotels, Kidnapping, Lesbian Sex, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Restaurants, Seduction, Something Akin To Dating, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 00:19:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auroreanrave/pseuds/auroreanrave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan can't really pinpoint the moment when all these 'dates' with Moriarty became normal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Is More Interesting With You Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in a canon-divergent world wherein Moriarty has since escaped from prison in season 2.

Joan can't _really_ pinpoint the moment when all these dates with Moriarty became normal.

She thinks at some point between the fifth and sixth dinner when Moriarty had accosted her - as much as 'accosting' can be walking up to someone in an expensive dress and a killer smile and escorting that someone into a limo - that she just gets used to it. A new development in her life which she had never anticipated but which she is rapidly becoming used to.

Moriarty, to her credit, never fails to disappoint. This time around, they've got a private table overlooking a rather beautiful view of Central Park. From forty stories up, it looks beautiful and calm, lights spilling out from inside and around it.

"You haven't touched your salad." Moriarty points out, tactfully taking a bite of her calves' liver and dabbing at her mouth with a napkin. Perfect manners and perfect poise, Joan always notes.

"Not really hungry." It comes out more subdued and less pointedly than Joan intends. Really.

"Something the matter?"

Joan shrugs. "Just a friend of mine. Complications." She's been truthful - her friend Andrea (Italian family, fantastic hair, office manager) and her husband Dan (middle class WASPs family, genuine smile, architect) have been trying for a baby for two years and when Andrea fell pregnant, it seemed destined. Then three days ago, and two months early, her waters broke during a finance meeting and the tiny baby was on a ventilator with spiraling debts.

Moriarty tilts her head to one side as she listens, before: "I never did understand the appeal of having children."

Joan snorts, finally taking a forkful of her salad. It's good. The viniagrette probably costs more than her first car. "I don't think sociopaths really care about kids anyway."

"Not really a sociopath, dear, but I understand your sentiment." Moriarty pours another glass of wine for them both and Joan looks out across the city and wonders _why_.

* * *

Sherlock, to his own credit, remains pointedly focused and doesn't say anything after the second dinner where Joan is 'abducted' and returned absolutely fine and full of rich food.

"Unless she's playing a long game and planning to kill you with all those rich sauces, I think you're rather safe, Watson." Sherlock doesn't even look up from his book - a sea of them are spread out on the floor, arranged in a rough spiral.

Joan rolls her eyes and steps over a copy of a nineteenth-century almanac to make them some tea. As the kettle boils she considers the past few days and what they mean.

Andrea and Dan had rung yesterday with amazing news - the little baby (Angelo, Joan remembers, she _must_ buy a gift) was fine and their debts had been removed, paid off in full and with interest by some anonymous third party. Dan thought it might have been a generous benefactor, Andrea had briefly wondered about a backlog from the insurance company and Joan knew better.

That afternoon on her way back from a crime scene with Sherlock - single homicide, faked home invasion, solved within a couple of hours - she had received a text from one of the many anonymous numbers she had come to associate with Moriarty.

It read simply, _Dinner soon? I know a delightful Serbo-Indian place. M xx_

Joan hadn't replied and hadn't texted back to ask about Dan and Andrea but her phone burned like a brand in her pocket. She turned her attention back to the tea, just as her pocket buzzed, phone jittering.

The new text message read: _Or what about little place in the UES I know? Very discreet and the boullaibasse is simply divine. M xx_

Joan had finished pouring her tea, wafts of mint-scented steam rising from it as she made her way over to Sherlock, curled up in an armchair and considered what to do.

* * *

This time, Moriarty had almost cancelled again. Joan doesn't understand why her stomach dropped into her shoes when she had rung - a brisk call of "sorry, darling, something came up" - and to her horror, she thinks she's getting attached.

"Why do you keep asking me?" Joan finally asks over dessert. The restaraunt is crowded and heavy with steam and perfumed smoke. Not the pinnacle of haute cuisine, Moriarty had commented. Joan feels overdressed to say the least in her best oversized silk shirt and cute dress shorts, but next to Moriarty, she feels relaxed in comparison.

"Because I find your company to quite fascinating." Moriarty said, pausing to roll a kink out of her shoulders. She's wearing a sleeveless shift dress and Joan watches in a weird fascination as pale skin and blonde hair and steel grey fabric fill her vision.

"It also helps, darling, that you're a rare breed. Smart, beautiful, brave." Moriarty's smile is a devilish temptation. "We could rule the world together." She takes a fork and cuts a piece of her cake.

"I'm not going to be the angel on your shoulder, keeping you from turning the world into your own personal sandbox."

"I wouldn't need you for that, dear," Moriarty's hand slides over the table, grasps Joan's (slender fingers, soft skin), "but it would be _so much fun_." She opens her mouth and devours the cake, clear green eyes focused on Joan the whole time.

Joan _shivers_ under the attention and counts to ten and tries to remember to breathe.

* * *

One of their clients rewards them with an all-expenses-paid weekend in the city. Sherlock doesn't take his spot - doesn't like hotels, he spends too much time trying to work out who was here last and berating the maids and really, he likes spending time at home too - but Joan does, dipping out of the brownstone on Friday night with a hold-all and her cell phone charged (she has visions of Sherlock's texts of murder and robbery and it really isn't worth trying to turn it off for longer than twelve hours).

She sleeps for ten hours, tucked into a bed as big and soft as she's ever seen and spends the day on herself. Goes to see a movie with a couple of friends, runs around the park, spends an hour in a bookstore without fear of being rushed. She gets back to the hotel, enjoys the pool and the sauna. She even gets a massage because why not?

Joan's just about settling down for some guilty pleasures - room service, John Hughes movies, not having to leave your bed - when there's a knock at the door and her plans spiral out of her head. She opens the door, tucked into an oversized dressing gown.

Moriarty is on the other side, coiffed and collected and perfect. She's wearing a summer dress, all pastel colours that swirl like a Van Gogh landscape, and Balenciaga heels so sharp they could double as murder weapons given half a chance and a quarter of the opportunity, but she still looks deadly and cold and so, so beautiful.

"I heard about your little staycation and thought I might join you. Day off and all that." Moriarty smiles, slides past Joan into the suite.

"How?" Joan asks, closing the door behind her.

"Oh, you know. Sources. I have contacts here and there."

"That's not as comforting as I think you mean it to be." Joan comments.

Moriarty smiles - so warm, so familiar - and then kisses Joan, presses her against a wall and kisses her again and again until her heart leaps out of her chest.

Moriarty's smile is slow and predatory and sweet and hungry, as if she's been waiting for this for some time. Joan can't say no. She's hungry too.

* * *

In the morning, Joan awakens to warmth drifting through her body, sunlight pulsing through the curtains. Her body is warm, lazy and langorous, aching in only the most pleasant of pleasant ways and thrumming with memories of pleasures past.

She stretches and, sadly, isn't surprised to find nothing but cool sheets on the other side of the bed. Moriarty's dress and heels are gone too, confirming her suspicions.

There is a note, however, crisp and folded and propped up on the pillow. Joan, it reads with a cursive flourish. She leans up on her elbows and opens it up.

_Something came up. Had to leave. Soon, Watson. M xx_

Joan sighs and flops down on the bed, note crumpling in her palm. So. That's that then.

* * *

Weeks go by without another text or message or visit. Sherlock reorganises the living room bookshelves after a long, restless night so Joan comes downstairs at five-am to find him knee deep in sorting out chemistry textbooks from allegorical Italian novels. Clyde is a paperweight and she gives him extra lettuce as a reward and a balm (she suspects he doesn't mind but it eases her conscience somewhat). Life doesn't change that much.

She goes on a couple of dates arranged by friends - the first is a bookseller named Max (sweet, 30s, balding) and the second is a friend of Detective Bell's, a fellow cop by the name of Donald (20s, Hispanic, infectious grin). Both are great in their own ways but after a couple of dates, she lets them slide away without any concern and turns back to work. The sex is okay, but not something she's aching to repeat.

She even walks around some of their old haunts, and while she swears that a couple of the concierges actually recoil in fear a little, she doesn't find anything out only that Ms Morstan (one of Moriarty's aliases) hasn't been in, in months, not since you were here with her last, miss.

Ironically, it's just when she's throwing herself back into work that Moriarty runs back into her life - quite _literally_ given the circumstances and something Joan would never have predicted.

Joan ends up kidnapped. Tobias Heller, thirty one years old, unemployed and a criminal record, has been kidnapping and mutilating women before leaving them to die on the side of the Hudson. Sherlock and Gregson had been looking into his previous girlfriends while she had been checking for any evidence near a recent dump site when she had felt the cold weight of something heavy and hard clocking her in the back of the head and then darkness.

She awakens cold and in pain and her arms strung above her head in restraints, manacles that are clipped to a stone wall, the same stone wall she's got her back up against. Heller is standing above her, cold smirk and hunting knife in hand and behind him, Joan can see three other girls together, trapped in a large wire cage for chickens.

They're all terrified, mumbling against their gags and Joan tries to identify them. Casey Kessler (white blonde, petite, soccer mom), Natalie Jones (black, athletic, office worker) and Janice Endicott (white redhead, slim, philosophy student). All alive, if sporting bruises and scratches. It's a good sign, Joan recognises. They're alive. And Sherlock is coming for her.

"Where the hell are we?" Joan manages to say, before she remembers the gags. Damn it. She takes a look around the cold dark cellar or basement they're in. An old water boiler is in the corner, an ancient foosball table in another corner.

Natalie twists her arm around and a trembling finger points towards a wall. Her fingernail is all but torn off, blood and dirt pressed there and Joan wants nothing more than to clean and sterilise, doesn't want her to lose the finger. She slows her breathing, takes scope of her surroundings, and looks to the wall.

Natalie’s pointing at a small window in the basement, the size of a small armoire on its side, and Joan strains her neck to look at what she can out of the window. Nothing but a soupy, grey sky and the hint of sunshine peeking through from the east, if Joan had to guess (it feels like mid-morning if nothing else and she can guess at the sun’s movements across the sky thanks to a presentation from Sherlock and some light astronomical reading).

Joan wriggles around, trying to garner some leeway off the wall. Her boots are gone – he better not have torched them damnit, she _loved_ those boots – and her socked feet slip off the smooth wall before she finally gains some purchase and finds herself able to push off the wall a bit.

_Not much_ , she thinks,  _but it’s a start_. It’s at that moment of small, elated victory, that Heller kicks open the door and stalks his way down into the cellar, blonde hair underneath a Giants beanie and with a length of electrical cord in one hand.

Joan tells herself not to cry, not to scream, even though the reptilian hindbrain part of her brain is screaming, is begging and pleading, her heart a staccato of beats and fear in her chest, and all she wants is to be safe, to run, to kick his ass, to beat him to a pulp, and leave him for dead.

The first blow feels like a punch through every nerve ending in her body. She bites down on her lip so hard it bleeds, welling crimson droplets like rubies, pulsing over tender lip muscle and nerve, but she won’t give in. She won’t.

Heller cracks her clean across the jaw, knocking loose a filling Joan’s had for over five years, and she doesn’t scream, because it’s a waste of energy and she’ll _need it_ when –

The door to the basement explodes open during Heller’s next swing, fragments of wood and flaking paint showering down the steps, and Joan looks to the girls because this can only mean something’s changed,  and Joan figures it might be for the best.

The figure drops down the stairs, ramming a blade in the size of Joan’s forearm into Heller’s throat before he can react, Heller gasping and groaning as blood fountains, arcing across the wall as he slumps to the ground, fists still clenched and his expression wide.

Casey, Janice and Natalie are cowering, arms covering their heads in case the new arrival decides to turn on them, but Joan keeps looking as the figure removes the keys to the manacles from Heller’s back pocket and undoes the restraints from Joan’s arms and legs, catching her when she collapses.

"Steady there, darling," and the voice in Joan's ear is familiar, instantly sending a flush of warmth to her chest because she _knows_ that voice, "you've got a long way to go yet."

Joan sinks to the ground, blood flowing to her legs again, and by the time she stands, the memory of blonde hair tied back under the thick hood strong in her mind, Moriarty is gone.

* * *

"I think she may actually like you, Watson." Sherlock observes when Joan is in her hospital room, because apparently the fact that she was a) a doctor, and b) actually aware and in charge of her own body and what goes on and how she feels, Joan has been kept overnight at a local hospital in upstate New York.

"And what do I do?" Joan pushes her hair back from her forehead, fingers scraping over the stitches in her forehead. Natalie and Casey and Janice are all fine. They'll need therapy and a week in hospital, but they're going to be fine. "I know this can't be easy for you."

Sherlock flips over the page of his paper. "The fact that you've been engaged in a weird relationship tango with a sworn enemy was at best, startling, but from what it appears, she rescued from the hands of a deranged serial killer. If she had wanted to get at me through you for revenge, then I would have expected to find funds or some kind of link to the former Mister Heller."

He sips his tea, then grimaces, and slides it back along the mounted plastic tray that tucks into the side of Joan's bed. "I feel she may have ulterior motives here beyond revenge. She may well have developed some feelings. As for yourself, well, I cannot comment on your emotional responses or state, but given you brought the situation up, I would deduce that you have feelings too."

"I did not bring the situation up, you did."

Sherlock smiles, taut. "And the fact that that was what you focused on during my speech all but validates it."

Joan doesn't given him the satisfaction of replying. She grabs the paperback that's been sitting on her bedroom bedside table, untouched for months, and studiously ignores Sherlock.

* * *

The bouquets of flowers that fill her hospital room the morning after aren't even a surprise, really. Joan peeks past all the violet tulips and honeysuckle and forget-me-nots to find the note.

_The world is infinitely better with you in it, Joan. Be in touch. M xx_

* * *

"I am glad to see Heller's injuries were not severe on you."

Joan _freezes_ on her way to the kitchen, glass tumbler poised in her hand like a hand grenade, ready to go off at the slightest provocation. Sherlock is having dinner with his brother (well, what counts as dinner - it's really just two hours of stilted conversation and barbs traded over fifty-dollar-plates of asparagus tips and aragula) and the brownstone is quiet.

Moriarty is sat at the dining table, her feet planted on the chair in front of her. She's looking less than immaculately coiffed for the first time Joan can remember. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, she's wearing a peasant shirt in ivory silk and dark wool-blend pants that look around the eight-hundred-dollar mark.

"What are you doing here?"

"I've been able to come in here anytime I like. Don't worry, I haven't before tonight. No sneaking in and watching you sleep."

Joan doesn't move a muscle. "Oh good, because that doesn't suddenly fill me with visions of you doing exactly that."

"I really am pleased to see that you're alright. If Heller had been more serious, I might ahave spent time killing him." Moriarty sips from a glass of wine - Joan recognises the glass as one of her own, but not the bottle on the dining table.

"What is going on? And I don't mean the sneaking in, although dear God that can never happen again. I mean... you and me and whatever the hell this is. The fact that you disappeared for nearly two months."

Moriarty pauses. "I was dealing with business... overseas. And I was... thinking."

"You were _thinking_? For two months?"

"I had a lot to consider. You, in particular. You were and are the most bizzare thing that has entered my life in a long time. I am not used to dealing with the human side of affairs that come across my radar, but when you and Sherlock actually managed to imprison me for a little while... I was intrigued. The only variable possible was you."

Joan backs into the counter. "I was an _experiment_?"

Moriarty's face is a mask of carefully constructed neutrality, but Joan can see the flash of something in her eyes. Frustration, worry maybe.

"At first. But then... I grew to like your company. And like you. More than anyone I have ever... I am unused to this. I am also perfectly aware of the situation at present. I came here to tell you that I understand entirely if you want to break off this arrangement. You have a life here, with Sherlock, and while I am loathe to leave a place I have spent years cultivating, I will move away from New York. I need a tan anyway." She's covering, scrambling, her mask never slipping but -

And, oh _there it is_. Joan sees it now. Everything is slotting into place like one of Sherlock's many fancy puzzles with the pieces that need looking at from every angle before it all just slides into the right grooves and makes _sense_.

She doesn't remember putting the glass down in the sink, but Joan is aware of how she moves across the kitchen, bending in her nightwear shorts and kisses Moriarty, hand sliding to cup her jaw and Moriarty reacts, sliding her hands across Joan's thighs and waist and she just... just _relaxes_ for the first time Joan has seen her. She chalks that up as a victory and angles her head.

* * *

The rate of crime in New York drops by sixty-five percent in the next three weeks. Gregson is shocked, Bell cynical and Sherlock aggravated that a lot of his potential crimes are unrealising their full potential. There are still murders, of course, but Sherlock ends up taking up more online courses to fill his time.

Joan just smirks against his ongoing complaints that he's _bored_ and helps Mrs Hudson reorganise Sherlock's collection of prized butterflies (a gift from a client) while Sherlock sulks in a corner.

* * *

One night when Joan is laid in bed, Moriarty above her, sweating and mussed and expression so open and honest and vulnerable, Joan asks her a question and Moriarty pauses, propping her elbows on the spaces outside of Joan's arms. She's thinking, her breasts pressed into the curve of Joan's stomach, and Joan knows that she has this, forever if she wants, and she does want, more than anything.

Moriarty replies and kisses Joan's navel, trailing down south and Joan's breath hitches in her chest, keening, safe in Moriarty's arms.

* * *

(She tells Sherlock that she actually knows Moriarty's real name when she's ready to go out an evening the week after. He sputters over his crime-scene-reconstruction of a murder and it shouldn't give Joan as much satisfaction as it does to see him frowning like a grumpy feline when she picks up her clutch and heads out to dinner with her girlfriend.)


End file.
